Archive for the ‘Argentina’ Category

The recent nuclear disaster in Japan’s tsunami-damaged Fukushima reactor has shaken – but not buried – plans for an atomic energy surge in South America, which right now has just four of the world’s 442 nuclear power plants. Read the rest of this entry ?

Left for decades on the proverbial back burner, Argentina’s once cutting edge but now very much dusty nuclear power sector is experiencing a real renaissance. For the first time in more than a quarter century, the country is preparing to open a new nuclear power plant, its third. More may be on the way as Argentina looks to ease its dependence on fossil fuels, particularly natural gas. Read the rest of this entry ?

A long-forecast “black-gold” rush appears to be underway around South America’s Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas even as the rest of the world, shocked by an unfathomable ecological disaster unfolding in North America’s Gulf of Mexico, slowly wakes up to the risks of off-shore oil drilling. Read the rest of this entry ?

An aged North Sea oil rig known as the Ocean Guardian is making a snail’s-paced journey from northern Scotland to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, where its pending arrival promises to put the isolated archipelago–the site nearly three decades ago of a brief but bloody war between Great Britain and Argentina–very much back in the public eye.

Known in South America as Islas Malvinas and in Britain as the Falklands, the territory is a collection of rocky islands some 450 km off the coast of Argentina, which, despite losing the 1982 war, continues to claim the tiny territory as its own. After the conflict, life returned to quiet normalcy for the islands’ roughly 3,000 inhabitants, who share the land with more than a half-million sheep and an estimated 750,000 penguins. Growing fishing and tourism industries have bucked up the economy in recent years, allowing the islanders to enjoy their unassuming self-sufficiency in relative peace with the outside world (see 1999-07-23). Read the rest of this entry ?